The Posterous Migration Guide: Imports by Wordpress, Tumblr, Squarespace, and Posthaven Compared

Posterous is shutting down as of April 30th, so it is ever more important for users to weigh their options and choose their next platform. 

We created Posthaven to provide a perfect export option to Posterous users. Before this, we were key parts of the team that built Posterous in 2008 and wrote and designed much of the software. My cofounder Brett and I both left over a year prior to the acquisition by Twitter. We were never part of the decision to shut it down or sell the company. 

While we're quite happy that the team ended up in a great place, we're super bummed that our years of effort will end up being shut down on April 30th, and as users ourselves, we're just as unhappy as you are that we have to move. 

Posthaven isn't the only option out there, so here's the list of what else you could do, and why we think Posthaven is your best choice. 

1) Wordpress.com (free)

To do this:

  1. Go to Wordpress.com
  2. Sign up for an account and create a blog
  3. Go to Tools > Import > Posterous
  4. Upload the wordpress_export_1.xml file from your Posterous backup. 
  5. Wordpress emails you when the process is done.

You can take the backup from Posterous and upload the XML file within it, and Wordpress will import posts, download media, and drop it into your new Wordpress site. 

It isn't perfect, however -- document files and audio files are not downloaded and will be lost, since they are hotlinked to the posterous.com domain, which will go away. Image files are downsized to 1000 pixel max width versions. Comments are brought over, but all comments lose the name of the person who left the comment. We've heard reports Unicode characters are broken also, which makes it not an option for non-English speaking blogs.

For those who don't want to pay and are OK with losing a few aspects to their site, Wordpress.com is your option. 

2) Tumblr using JustMigrate.com (free for 100 posts, $10 to $99 for more)

To do this:

  1. Go to justmigrate.com
  2. Enter your posterous hostname and email address
  3. Link your account to Tumblr
  4. Pay for extra posts if needed
  5. The team will email you when your site is ready. 

The JustMigrate team is actually a startup team out of India called 3Crumbs and they'll import about 100 of your posts for free, but if you have more than that, it'll cost more. It's $10 for 250 posts, $25 for 500 posts, and $99 for a business account with support and no post limits. Tumblr imposes a limit to the number of imported posts per day, between 60 and 100 per day. 

This option does not support comment importing. These items are lost in the import. To Siddarth's credit, they've recently added video, audio and multiple image support. 

For those who really want their content on Tumblr, JustMigrate is your only option.

3) Squarespace ($10/mo)

To do this:

  1. Go to squarespace.com and sign up for an account
  2. Pay $96/year or $10/mo
  3. Go to the Cog Icon and click Import/Export (10th option from top of subnav)
  4. Click Import Site (and wait a while for Squarespace to load data)
  5. Posterous blogs will all be imported under http://yoursite.squarespace.com/posteroushostname, e.g. mine was at http://garry-tan.squarespace.com/garry

Squarespace has done an admirable job with this option. It's clean and mostly bug free (though my first import failed and I had to enter my credentials twice to try again). Full image galleries do come through, though Squarespace galleries are quite unintuitive in that you can't tell that they're image galleries (no indication there are more photos.) 

However, there is still data loss, as all of the following will not be brought over: documents, audio, video files. These types of files are all lost. Your URLs will break because of step 5 above -- the URLs change and can't be preserved except for whatever Posterous blog you set as your homepage.  Just like Wordpress, you still lose the names of your commenters.

For those who have intense customization needs and want the power-user option, have only one Posterous blog you want to preserve URLs for, and don't care about video, audio and document files, Squarespace can work just fine. 


4) Edublogs ($8/mo for import)

Edublogs is a Wordpress Multi-User-based system, but it appears to be broken at the moment. Their Posterous XML-based importer (probably the same one as Wordpress.com above at best) shows this error:

 And their Posterous API-based importer doesn't work at all -- just spins the loading icon forever. I've emailed the team to see if they can fix it.

Are there other options you've heard of? Let us know at help@posthaven.com.


5) Posthaven ($5/mo)

To do this:

  1. Go to Posthaven.com and sign up for an account
  2. Click Import and enter your Posterous credentials. 
  3. Posthaven downloads all your data from Posterous using the API and emails you when it's done

Posts are saved perfectly, with no munging of HTML or breakage. Since we were two out of the three original people who worked on Posterous, you can expect most everything you liked about Posterous will be in Posthaven sooner or later. 

Right now, importing works great. The service has imported over 800,000 objects in the past week and a half, and everyone who has used it so far has been very satisfied with the quality of the import. 

All of the following are properly imported and saved, because we are Posterous users too and have a lot of data we wanted to save: 

  • URL matching, so full pagerank is preserved if you are using a custom domain
  • full resolution photos and photo galleries
  • video
  • audio
  • documents
  • tags
  • view counts
  • pages
  • comments

It's the most comprehensive form of import available. The Posthaven team is continuing to work on the platform. Post by web is in a working state and being improved, while post by email and bookmarklet are coming soon after. 

For those who care about their data and want as close to perfect as possible preservation of their memories, thoughts, and blog posts, Posthaven is the best way to go. 

Posthaven is the only place you can save your data safely. 

All of the other options result in some form of data loss. Lost photos. Lost photo galleries. Lost videos. Lost documents. Lost audio files. Lost comments. That's just not OK.

We're the team that built it the first time, and we'll make it even better this time. None of the other services will be able to bring back the way the bookmarklet worked, or post by email, or how email notifications worked.

We guarantee you'll love your import, or your money back.

We are happy to refund your $5 if you don't like the results of the import or are dissatisfied for any reason. Email us at help@posthaven.com if you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or just want to learn more. 

Sign up for Posthaven today »